


I, the anchor, am slowly sinking

by anamnesisUnending



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Buddy is having Doubts, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post Episode: s03e06 Juno Steel and the Tools of Rust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26204479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamnesisUnending/pseuds/anamnesisUnending
Summary: “I’m just… afraid that this is all a mistake.” It’s stark and strange, her confession of doubt. Even in the intimate dark of their room, in their bed, Vespa feels almost as if she is eavesdropping to hear it. Buddy has not allowed herself to voice any uncertainty to Vespa since the last time the two of them were truly alone together, before the Carte Blanche was even named.--Buddy reflects of the theft of the Key.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko & Jet Sikuliaq (mentioned), Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	I, the anchor, am slowly sinking

**Author's Note:**

> I was suuuuper busy this summer so there are other projects I need to get back to, just wanted to do something quick to get back in the swing of Actually Writing fic again.
> 
> Title from Lucy Dacus's Pillar of Truth

When Vespa turns in for the night, Buddy’s already there in their bedroom. Usually she’s up for another hour or so after Vespa—can’t let herself rest for a second, always chasing down leads on the next heist, or solving whatever problems Ransom and Steel have cooked up between them. The closest Buddy gets to relaxing is listening to Rita blather on about whatever stream she’s watching. Vespa can’t fathom what could possibly be relaxing about that—it’s hard enough to focus her own disorganized thoughts, to sort her senses into reality, without having to follow the jarring sharp turns Rita’s ramblings take. Although that’s not quite right—the closest Buddy gets to relaxing, before she comes in for the night, are the quiet hours she spends with Sikuliaq. But even those have been tense, since they found the Key just days ago. Vespa has to admit, even she’s unsettled by that. Besides Buddy, Sikuliaq was the first person she’d learned to offer a modicum of trust to after all her time in Cerberus. He’s… steady. Not for her to lean on, she’s not ready to trust that much yet, but like having the ground beneath your feet. You learn to take it for granted. So when even he’s shaken by something, it has to feel like an earthquake.

It’s no wonder the stress has caught up with Buddy. She’s standing by the window, half her face pressed up against the cold glass, the other half obscured by her hair. Vespa closes the door behind her as quietly as possible, blinks to adjust her eyes to the dark, lit only by the soft ambient glow of the green fairy lights strung across the ceiling like fireflies.

“How’s your head?” she says, as gently as she can.

Buddy hums, just barely tinged with a groan. “Like a maelstrom on Neptune.”

“That bad, huh?” Vespa pads across the room and lets her hands alight on Buddy’s shoulders.

“I’ll muddle through,” Buddy says, leaning back against Vespa. “The medication helped.”

Vespa’s hands slip down to wrap around her waist, and Buddy lets herself drift away from the window in Vespa’s arms, until they’re both sitting on the edge of their bed. Vespa runs a cool hand over Buddy’s forehead, then down until it’s covering both her eyes, mechanic and organic. Her fingertips trace the scarred side of her face, cracked ruins of skin stretched too tight over her skull. Buddy can’t feel anything there, anymore; all the nerve endings are scorched away. She draws in a tense breath nonetheless.

“Should I stop?” Vespa murmurs.

Buddy shakes her head, just slightly. “I don’t mind. I expect anyone else would flinch away when they realized they were touching a cadaver. It just keeps surprising me that you don’t care that I look like this.”

“I care—“ Vespa says, drawing back Buddy’s hair and leaning in to press a kiss against her desiccated cheekbone. “—that you’re the most beautiful woman in the galaxy.”

Buddy lets out a breathy, self-deprecating laugh. Vespa wants to kiss the sound of it out of her mouth, wants to kiss her until they can both barely breathe for it. Another night, though. She presses her lips to the corner of her jaw, her neck, her shoulder, following the path with the hand not resting over Buddy’s eyes, down to rub the tension out of Buddy’s shoulders.

The tension doesn’t ease, though, nor does the tense silence Buddy’s weaving with her lips pursed and brow furrowed. Vespa knows the difference between the quiet of Buddy wishing away a migraine and the quiet of her wrapping all her worries around her already aching brain.

“What’s wrong?” Vespa asks.

“Nothing, darling,” Buddy says, but dully, without any of the sparkle and sincerity that usually makes Vespa hang on her every word.

“Come on, Bud, that’s a lie and you know it.”

Buddy draws in a pained sigh, holding some admission on her tongue she doesn’t yet have the energy to speak.

“You don’t have to say it,” Vespa says. “But I know you. And I know when something’s bothering you.”

Buddy nods, leaning ever so gently into the pressure of Vespa’s hands. “Jet will hardly speak to me about our last job,” she finally says. “Except to say he doesn’t blame me, which hardly matters, because _I_ _do._ ” She sighs. “He just shoots that thousand-yard stare straight through his tea leaves and hardly says a word. I haven’t seen him look so bad in almost seven years, but back then I had the words to help. Now I’ve nothing useful to say at all.”

There’s a long pause while Vespa grimaces in sympathy and rubs Buddy’s back.

“I’m just… afraid that this is all a mistake.” It’s stark and strange, her confession of doubt. Even in the intimate dark of their room, in their bed, Vespa feels almost as if she is eavesdropping to hear it. Buddy has not allowed herself to voice any uncertainty to Vespa since the last time the two of them were truly alone together, before the Carte Blanche was even named.

“What do you mean?” Vespa says, hating the smallness of her own voice.

“I just don’t know if this will work. Or even if it will be worth it if it does. You know I don’t believe in perfect crime, but imperfect is one thing. _Reckless_ is another. There’s hardly a thing that could’ve gone wrong on our last job that _didn’t,_ ” Buddy’s picked up momentum again, speaking with the swift certainty of her captain’s voice, though her words seem a harsh parody of that Buddy. “I swore to Jet he wouldn’t have to have anything to do with M’tendere, and then I put him on a collision course with them by sending him planetside and lost contact with him for _hours_ , with no idea of what could be happening to him _._ I sent you and Pete and Juno to an empty house on a wild goose chase, and then _Dark Matters_ got involved when we had no reason to suspect they would, and you barely made it out alive. If there’s even a fraction of a chance they caught our scent we’ll be hunted for the rest of our lives. I could have lost you, darling. I still could.”

Shame and anger sink into Vespa’s chest again, like a punch between her ribs. Buddy hadn’t had to worry about her like this when they were young, hadn’t had to worry that Vespa was going to get hurt or fuck everything up. “I can take care of myself,” Vespa says, with more sharpness to her voice than she means.

“I know, love,” Buddy says, pulling Vespa’s hand away from her face and twisting to look at her, clasping her hand like _Vespa’s_ the one that needs reassurance. “I’m sorry. It isn’t your competence I’m concerned with, darling; I’ve never doubted you, and I strongly suspect I never will. But how can I call myself a captain if all I do is throw my family into dangers I can’t predict?”

“We did all the prep work we could—“

“And it all amounted to nothing. Aren’t you the one that’s always said that if a job can’t be prepared for it shouldn’t be done? I was alone here. I sent you all away and I was alone on the Carte Blanche, and every second I couldn’t hear your voice I was terrified I’d never see you again—that I’d just be left with myself and this heartless hollow ship and every way I’d fucked it all up on replay in my head.”

Buddy’s wide dark eye stares into Vespa’s in the low light, her expression contorted in anger and hurt. It’s all Vespa can do not to break down and cry under the desperation in Buddy’s gaze, but Buddy breaks first, ducking her head, speaking soft and hoarse, “Sometimes I scare myself thinking it’s not even real. That I’m just hurting the people I love for no reason, and it’s all going to be for nothing.”

“ _Buddy—“_ Vespa says, her own voice sounding so fragile.

“And I couldn’t do that to you, darling, I don’t know how I could even live with myself if I’m wrong and it isn’t—“

“It’s real,” Vespa insists. “It has to be. We wouldn’t have found all those clues, they wouldn’t be guarded under lock and key like they were, just for it to not be real.”

“I know,” Buddy says, soft, then again, as if she’s trying to convince herself, “I know.”

Vespa leans in and presses a kiss to Buddy’s forehead. “Bud, you can’t put this all on yourself. I know things looked bad for a while back there, but every job looks like that when you’re in the thick of it. We made it out okay.”

Buddy sighs and tips her head forward to rest against Vespa’s chest. “I suppose it just looks different when you can’t _be_ in the thick of it. It’s… very difficult, being a satellite accessory to all our crimes. I just wish I could have been down there with you. Like the old days.”

Vespa hums, and tucks her chin over Buddy’s head. There are a dozen different reasons Buddy rarely goes into the field anymore. Information and assets that need to be protected on the ship, while most of their team is on world, calculations to keep the Carte Blanche at precise coordinates to make a clean getaway. There’s a part of Vespa that’s secretly relieved that she doesn’t have to worry about Buddy getting hurt or captured among all the other terrors whirling around in her head when she’s out on a job. But she also knows how much it frustrates Buddy, knows the other reason that she rarely voices to the rest of the crew. Since Cerberus, Buddy can’t be so reckless with her body as she was when she was young. It’s entirely unreasonable to risk having to sprint away from pursuers or brawl rogue security guards when every day she has to calculate which joints she needs to put in a brace, how many steps she can take without the pain making it impossible to get out of bed tomorrow.

“Look, I get it,” Vespa says, sitting back and taking Buddy’s hands. “It’s scary to think about all of this falling apart. I’m scared of that all the goddamn time. But we pulled it together. You know I can’t stand them, but Juno’s good at thinking on his feet when he’s not too busy screaming at me, and Ransom knows how to keep cool under pressure. I’m not gonna say we’re a perfect team, or that I like working with them, but we got out because they’re good at what they do, and we _can_ work together when it counts. Hell, we got away from _Dark Matters_. Not just me and the lovebirds, Jet and Rita too. Do you know anyone else who could’ve pulled that off?”

Buddy shakes her head in half hearted acceptance.

“It’s ‘cause you put together a damn good crew, Bud. If we’re running into fires we can’t put out, it’s because we already know how to manage the ones we start. You’re a good captain.” Vespa cracks a crooked smile, “You’ve even got me playing the optimist for once.”

Buddy chuckles weakly. “Optimism looks good on you. I wish I got to see it more.”

“I know,” she says, turning away sheepishly.

Buddy cups her cheek and turns her head back to kiss her, first a gentle peck, then deeper, soft and slow. “Darling?”

“Yeah Bud?”

“What would I do without you?”

Vespa closes her eyes, their foreheads pressed together, and lets out a shuddering sigh. “Let’s not find out again, alright?”

Buddy strokes her thumb across Vespa’s cheek. “Of course.” She yawns, and Vespa can see once again the slight furrow in her brow, the distant look of pain in her eye.

“You should get some sleep,” she says.

“Maybe so,” Buddy says, slipping down beneath the covers and resting her head on Vespa’s lap. Vespa gently drags her fingers through Buddy’s hair, tracing tiny circles on her scalp, and Buddy sighs softly. “You should rest too, darling; I didn’t mean to keep you up with my troubles.”

“Don’t worry,” Vespa says. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Buddy’s breathing steadies out, while Vespa stays up, staring at the stars out their window for a long time, her fingers still tangled in Buddy’s hair. She worries the inside of her cheek between her teeth, fixed on the future they’re hurtling towards, and the dangers it holds.

“Hey Bud?” she says, almost a whisper.

“Hm?” Buddy mumbles sleepily.

“If the curemother prime isn’t real—which I’m not saying, because it _is—_ but _if_ it isn’t… then we’ll still find whatever they’re hiding. We’ll find any secrets they’ve got—the Board, or whoever else, whatever motherfucker is in charge of them—we’ll find them, and we’ll find all their secrets, and we’ll tear them all down. Okay? Because no matter what, we’re not doing this for nothing. We’re doing this to make things right, whatever way we can.”

Buddy blinks, and her lips part just slightly before curling into an awed smile at the sharp determination in Vespa’s voice. “Okay,” she says, and she curls her fingers in the hem of Vespa’s nightshirt and beckons her down, slots herself into Vespa’s arms, and falls asleep, her soft breath warm against Vespa’s breast.

**Author's Note:**

> maybe this is a hot take but I don't think the curemother prime exists...
> 
> thanks for reading! kudos & comments are my lifeblood


End file.
